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WRITINGININTERNSHIPTOSUPPORTMEANINGFULLEARNING
Hairulliza Mohamad Judi, Nurul Syifa Ramli, Wan Nur Iffah Wan Nazri
Fakulti Teknologi dan Sains Maklumat Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
ABSTRACT
In learning process, the activities of writing may stimulate active learning with the help of clear writing goal. The writing goal enhance learning to help students to organise ideas, illuminate meaning and produce sound argumentation. In designing problem-solving strategies of internship program, writing serves as a tool to understand a problem, to observe progress, to assimilate ideas and to amend possible resolutions. The paper addresses the potentials of writing as internship research activities appropriate for virtual working environment. The paper shares a case study of research based virtual internship to accommodate serious game development in morral education for preschool children.
Keyword: academic writing, virtual internship, research based training, supervision
1. INTRODUCTION
The new normal of physical distancing and remote learning leads to virtual internship to take place. The virtual internship involves participation in dynamic problem solution in professional working environment using remote placement training. The opportunity for virtual internships allow students to work and engage remotely, via on-line modes, in a workplace (Briant & Crowther 2020). Virtual internship has no standard format due to various session duration, activities, structure, and evaluation, and this type of placement continue to solve many
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internship issues problems as many in-person positions were cancelled or shifted online (Hora et al. 2021).
To ensure students gain meaningful learning experiences in virtual internship, project based supervisor needs to design specific learning experiences throughout the internship period.
Meaningful learning occurs when students are wilfully engaged in a meaningful task to engage active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative activities (Howland et al. 2012).
Internships serves a substantial role in undergraduate program, that permits for professional skill development among final year students (Mia et al. 2020). However, apprehensions regarding what comprise successful internships, in research-based internship continue arises (Ruggiero & Boehm 2017; Tractenberg et al. 2017). It is expected that interns are exposed to the real phenomenon in the software engineering field, in the context of transferring the gained experience to other and future context. To overcome the issue of dull and wasteful research-based internship, careful design and evaluation of the internship based on sound theoretical foundations and assumptions in Multimedia (Ruggiero & Boehm 2016).
This paper demonstrates writing activities to be part of virtual intership task in project based implementation. The case study of virtual teams lead into discussion of opportunities for improvement and limitations as well as task design recommendations for virtual internships.
2. WRITINGINVIRTUALINTERNSHIP
In learning process, the activities of writing may stimulate active learning with the help of clear writing goal. The writing goal enhance learning to help students to organise ideas, illuminate meaning and produce sound argumentation. In designing problem-solving strategies of internship program, writing serves as a tool to understand a problem, to
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observe progress, to assimilate ideas and to amend possible resolutions (Feldgen & Clua 2014).
The writing activity focuses the interns’ attention on their current work. These activities could be as simple as documenting observations, or describing the manner in which they decided to perform a task. Whatever the content, it should require interns to think through their cognitive processes and make plans on how to improve that process.
To involve interns actively, various tasks involve them to prepare report reports. The reports address issue related to: project proposal, problem statement, research objective, development cycle related to the serious game development research. Supervisors play important role to carefully select the topics students must cover in their writing in order to convince interns to embrace the writing assignments from the start and perform them with commitment and enthusiasm. Interns' interest in writing based on their expectations on how software engineers work. Although the primary training and interests of software engineers lie in technical areas, in many software-engineering activities, the ultimate product of their work is a written document. Second, writing to be regarded as an interesting and mind-blowing activity. Interns appreciate that they are in the right track on it while they are learning how to master a professional report and how to write as a professional. Interns take ownership to make meaning of the writing content as part of an intern and in the process of becoming as industry professionals (Bowen 2011). Evaluation of writing provides remedy tool as part of the learning process to rectify mistakes and errors the comments and recommendations (García-Jiménez, Eduardo Gallego-Noche &
Gómez-Ruíz 2015). Third, writing habits train interns to reorganize research material in their own way, with freedom to use table, figures, graph for harmonious research idea presentation.
The writing activity addresses three primary benefits (Feldgen & Clua 2014). First, it allows interns to deal with their personal interpretation regarding a specific topic or a set of topics. Second, writing results in enhanced group discussions, promotes collaborative learning and group members can gain detailed access to each other’s thoughts. Third, writing gives interns a powerful assessment tool that is quite useful in gauging whether they really understand a research topic or approach. The projects and writing activities
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apply a combination of principles from learning theory and group dynamics as a our way to train interns soft skills.
3. GUIDINGWRITINGASPARTOFSHARINGRESEARCHWORK
There are various ways the instructors can do to help students to gain writing skills in academic paper. Similarly in internship, supervisors play vital role to ensure interns gain insight for research vital task by refining correct understanding and following correct methodology. Writing activities in virtual learning include modules comprise resources including journal papers, brainstorming, and videos while innovative internship tools embrace reflective writing, mentorship guidelines, and virtual writing skills training (Mikhail et al. 2021).
Writing about research issues and the resolutions to those issues for appropriate audience, allows students gain a sense of exposure in the professional setting (Willey 2019). Writing activities require interns to respond to concerns of academic writing standard and enhance the creativity needed to identify and analyze information, comparison and critical evaluation of perspective, and fair evaluation of own writing results. The whole writing task consists of draft writing, revising, and proofreading that work as a form of learning process in a more real-world simulated setting. Writing trains interns in three aspects:
generation of ideas, organization of ideas and language conventions (Fatima et al. 2021).
The process of putting arguments in complete sentence and paragraph serves to clarify and organize interns’ own thoughts regarding research concepts, simpify research problem and set boundary and focus.
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Supervising strategies play an important role to help interns in writing. These include editing, presentation, written feedback, peer review, self-review, extensive reading, pair work and group work (Fatima et al. 2021).
4. SHARING WRITING IN PUBLICATION AND CONFERENCE
This paper involves case study of research based internship to accommodate serious game of moral education for preschool children. Two interns undergo the program with slightly different focus. Writing tasks target various papers to strengthen the research outcome at diverse stages, as presented in Figure 1. The first task comprise of theoretical research serves as literaure part of research proposal. Participation in conference dan competition lead the group to write papers on the given theme. Write up on game design model is expected to be published in targeted journal.
Figure 1: writing accordig to research stage
Theoretical study
Literature review
Sustainable features of game development
Self directed Sustainable learning Meaningful learning via technology integration
SLR of moral education
game
Learning resource festival innovation
Learning resource festival game
application
Model assessment
via Delphi method
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A few writing assessent instrument appears to be comprehensive and very much relevant to the current work. Therefore, the particular model could be used as foundation to the intended evaluation in the future. Academic writing motivation has a significant effect on the ability in writing research article among students (Andheska et al. 2020). Modified instrument to suits research based internship is presented here.
Efficiency of Writing activity in internship instrument The extent to which the activity is conducted
1 Very rarely 2 Rarely
3 Somehow frequent 4 Frequent
5 Very frequent
The extent to which I involve in writing during internship program 1. Research proposals and literature review
2. Background of the problem, problem formulation, and research objectives 3. Development of theoretical studies
4. Research methodology
5. Research analysis results and findings
6. Research presentation for conference and exhibition 7. Research write up for journal paper
The extent to which I accomplish from writing during internship program 1 Very little
2 little 3 moderate 4 high 5 Very high
1. Accurate understanding of concepts in the research 2. Clarify concepts in the research from various perspective 3. Clarify problem formulation and research objectives
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8. Critical discussion of findings or research work 9. Relate the implication from the work
10. Precise conclusion from the findings or research work 11. Use correct language
5.
C
ONCLUSIONSPresent study addresses the potentials of writing as internship research activities appropriate for virtual working environment. The paper shares a case study of research based virtual internship to accommodate serious game development in morral education for preschool children.In order to create an effective virtual internships for students, key components should be addressed. Aspects like idea generation and idea organisation appear as benefit from writing activities.
The case reveals substantial prospects for future work into the effectiveness of writing activity in virtual internship. Improvement for any shortcomings such as frequency of evaluation and type of feedback for the writing progress.
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